


The Luxury of Time

by glycerineclown



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Come Shot, F/M, Masturbation, Missionary Position, Post-The Defenders, Post-The Punisher, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-23
Updated: 2018-01-23
Packaged: 2019-03-08 09:14:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13455135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glycerineclown/pseuds/glycerineclown
Summary: They’ve never done this, never just hung out before, with no real objective. They’ve only ever had anticipation and trauma—the keys to any good crush, if she remembers high school correctly. And sure, she’d like to have sex with him, but if Frank’s not ready or isn’t interested, she won’t be destroyed. Or, she’d like to believe she won’t be.They’re two single adults spending a weekend together. That could be a just-friends thing. It could. Maybe they’ll find out that they have nothing to talk about, but she knows that’s not true.





	The Luxury of Time

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic about how frustrating it is that in his prime, Frank Castle is definitely capable of having crazy movie sex but he's so horribly injured. If you were wondering why there has not been a broad range of sexual positions in my previous work, well. This is my gift to you. And to me.

The apartment next door to Karen’s is inhabited by a girl named Alicia. They keep to different schedules and don’t see each other in the hall a lot, but she’s nice enough. One side of her head is shaved, and the other side’s a different jewel tone every month or so. She got her Master’s from NYU last year and has a mid-level job at a tech startup.

Alicia is also in the height of a serious honeymoon phase with her current boyfriend. His name’s Nick, according to what Karen can hear through the wall in her bedroom. Nick must not have a very nice place, or maybe he has roommates, because Karen can hear Nick and Alicia fucking each other’s brains out two or three times a week now.

It’s been making Karen really horny, if she’s honest. She hasn’t had regular sex in a long time, the kind where you stop worrying as much and ask for what you really want—and Alicia’s been getting it.

Karen has a vibrator, of course, but she’s been lacking in human relationships ever since she came to New York. She’s met guys for drinks a few times, but never felt like calling them after. She hasn’t _dated_ anyone since Matt, and he’s dead.

They never had sex, though, and it’s probably terrible that she’s glad they didn’t. As if everything, the deceit and the loss, would have hurt more if his dick had ever been inside her.

Maybe she should just say yes to the next source who tries to pick her up—it happens a lot more often than she’s comfortable with. Bat her eyelashes and maybe get her needs met. That would require being open with someone, though, and fucking some guy who doesn’t really know her and never could just sounds like a waste of time.

Karen doesn’t expect the lead of an armed security detail to be so metrosexual, and dare she say flirtatious. She doesn’t think she’s projecting. Karen considers him briefly, but he looks like he’d be a lot of work to keep happy, and is probably too confident in his own handsomeness to try very hard to please her.

Later, when she’s on the floor with Frank, when she can’t hear anything yet and her brain’s still processing that a bomb really just went off—touching him, being touched by him, eye contact—in the moment, it feels like the most intimacy she’s had in years. Frank’s first concern is always her, when these things happen. He doesn’t complain, even though he might as well have been run over by a truck.

Frank had looked relatively fine when Lewis had dragged her into the elevator and the doors had closed between them. It didn’t look like Lewis’ bullet had even hit him. She doesn’t want to imagine everything that must have happened between then and the basement kitchen. He’d gotten torn apart to get to her.

She lets him— _makes him_ —take her hostage, because she trusts Frank with her life, and she has an opportunity to be his shield for once.

Frank leaves out of the ceiling, and Karen gives her statement, and then she goes home.

Alicia and Nick are at it again when she gets out of the shower. The bedsprings shriek to a rhythm like a heartbeat, and half of Karen wants to go next door and scream at them, or pound on the wall, but they never do it after ten, which Karen supposes is a blessing. 

The other half wishes that Frank was still with her. She doesn’t know where he’s living, if he has heat or adequate food, a decent bed. Winters in New York are no joke when you’re on the street.

Maybe he could come over in need of medical care, and stay the night.

Maybe he’d lay next to her in this bed and they’d listen in and laugh about Alicia and her boyfriend. Maybe he’d start mocking them, moaning up at her ceiling like he’s in a porno— _oh yeah, give it to me—_ and she’d dissolve into giggles before joining him.

And maybe when there’s silence next door, and they wait with bated breath for the lovemaking to return, he’d turn his head on the pillow, and smile at her. She’d move closer, and pull Frank in for a kiss.

Maybe he’d stand at the edge of the bed and fuck her deep, with her legs wrapped tight around his waist. Fuck her until she can’t feel her fingers. Fuck her until she really is louder than Alicia, fuck her until she’s trying not to scream his real name. _Frank, Frank, Frank._

His dick would stretch her so nice, would feel better with every thrust, would fill her until she’d never want to let him go.

His dick would wake the neighbors. Her vibrator just can’t do it justice.

 

A few days after Thanksgiving, Frank calls to check in. They meet at the waterfront again, and he tells her about Homeland’s offer, and Madani, and the group meetings. He tells her that he’s getting his affairs in order, that he’s going to ditch the phone and get a new one, but she would hear from him again soon.

It’s so much news, and so much of it seems so objectively good, that she feels like she’s missing something.

He touches her face before they go their separate ways.

When she does hear from him, another two weeks later, it’s a Christmas card addressed to her, care of The Bulletin. No return address.

He’s staying up north, way out in Yonkers, he’s rented a place. And if she wanted to come up for the weekend after the first of the year, he wouldn’t mind the company. That he could go grocery shopping for two.

There’s a phone number scrawled where his name should be, and Karen calls it to confirm the dates. Frank readily agrees. She doesn’t usually have a Monday-Friday schedule, but even if Ellison gives her grief about it, she suspects he’ll be thrilled on the inside.

Karen trudges through the end of December. The office holiday party is pretty boring—she’s one of the youngest people working there. Foggy and Marci throw a raucous Christmas Eve dinner that Karen gets too drunk at, and she just goes to bed early on New Year’s Eve despite living in NYC.

In the first week of January, the Bulletin rolls out a few downer articles that no one would have wanted to read over the holidays, and then she packs an overnight bag.

She goes out to buy fresh condoms before she leaves.

Karen’s been to Yonkers before, but she still half-expects Frank to have found himself a cabin out in the woods. When she gets off the bus at a stop just a few blocks from the address Frank had provided, she’s on a busy street, outside a shabby butcher shop. There’s a taco joint next door that smells incredible, and a Buffalo Exchange on the other side.

She calls Frank, and tells him where she is. He appears around the corner a few minutes later, his face dark with a new beard instead of blood or bruising, with a smile for her. He swings her overnight bag over his shoulder, and they walk down the street toward his place.

They’ve never done this, never just hung out before, with no real objective. They’ve only ever had anticipation and trauma—the keys to any good crush, if she remembers high school correctly. And sure, she’d like to have sex with him, but if Frank’s not ready or isn’t interested, she won’t be destroyed. Or, she’d like to believe she won’t be.

She’d like to believe that she’s not in love with him—he’ll never be Pete Castiglione to her, he’s always going to be a murderer, and she knows it. But he’s also always going to be a man who would die for her in a second, and whose reluctance about her involvement in his business doesn’t make her feel resentful.

A man who accepts her fully, takes her judgment seriously, but doesn’t judge _her_.

And one who bought her white roses.

They’re two single adults spending a weekend together. That could be a just-friends thing. It could. Maybe they’ll find out that they have nothing to talk about, but she knows that’s not true.

His building is old brick like hers, about ten stories high, with fire escapes crisscrossing down between the windows. She can see him being anonymous here.

They go up the stairs to the third floor. Frank stops in front of the second door in the hall.

“It’s not much,” Frank says, as he pulls his keys from his jacket pocket to unlock the door. “I found some pretty decent stuff on Craigslist last week, someone was moving.”

She has no expectations, although she doesn’t think he would have invited her for the weekend if his apartment was empty.

It’s relatively sparse, doesn’t have décor, but there’s a couch in the front room, and a laptop on the coffee table. Wood floors, rental-white walls, and no television. A bigger kitchen than at Karen’s, and a bar at the counter with two stools.

The small bathroom is clean. Karen peeks into the open door of the bedroom, and there’s a queen-sized mattress on the floor. A paperback is held open upside-down on the blankets. A few items of dark clothing are hanging in the closet.

“I can sleep on the couch,” he says when he sees her looking. “I’ve fallen asleep on it a few times already.”

Karen didn’t expect him to suggest any different—they’ve never addressed what they’re doing and he’d never assume. She’ll have to make that move.

After using his bathroom, Karen comes back into the kitchen, and he’s making coffee.

“You want some?” he asks, knowing she’ll say yes.

When it’s ready, Frank pours, and they carry their mugs out to the couch and sit.

“You don’t seem to have done too badly for yourself, Frank,” she says, placing her mug on the table and leaning down to unzip her boots.

He shrugs his shoulders. “Not a lot else to do. Been tryin’ to keep busy.”

She nods, slipping out of her boots and setting them aside. She turns toward him, pulling one leg up onto the couch. Frank takes a sip of his coffee, and sets it beside hers. Their shoulders brush as he leans past her.

“You look a lot better than you did the last time I saw you,” Karen says. “Healing up okay?”

Frank nods, sitting back. “For the most part. ‘Bout killed myself gettin’ this couch in here, though, even with Curtis’ help.”

His hair’s grown out a bit, and she rests her elbow on the back of the couch, lets her hand come up to stroke over the back of his neck.

Frank closes his eyes, and relaxes into her touch. His closest hand slides over Karen’s thigh, his fingers tucking under her knee, his thumb rubbing over the fabric there.

When he turns his head to look at her, she _knows_ she’s blushing, that he’ll be able to see it.

“I bought stuff to make pork chops tonight, if that’s okay,” he says, looking down at his hand at her knee. He bites his lip a little, darts his tongue out. “It’ll be nice to have someone else to eat with.”

Karen smiles. She can’t remember the last time someone cooked for her—it might have been Elena Cardenas. “That sounds great, Frank.” She reaches for her coffee, takes a sip. “What did you want to do today?”

“I didn’t really have plans,” Frank says. His hand leaves her, and reaches for his own mug. “I could show you the neighborhood. It’s Saturday, there’s a farmer’s market a few blocks up. They’ve got food, and a flea market that’s supposed to be, you know, a flea market.”

Karen starts to make a face, but a smile fights past it. “God, Frank, that’s so domestic,” she says, more out of disbelief than anything.

He scoffs at her over the lip of his coffee. “You asked.”

She looks around the room. “We should get you a plant, liven up the place a bit. I’m seeing big, green fronds.”

Frank rolls his eyes like he’ll regret this.

 

They get a snack from a stall at the market to tide them over until dinner, and walk back to his apartment at mid-afternoon, lugging a houseplant and a side table.

“You know what this reminds me of?” Karen asks, adjusting the pot in her arms as they pause at a crosswalk.

“What?”

“ _Léon: The Professional_. You’re the sniper and I’m carrying the plant.”

Frank snorts as they cross the street, and then, in a bad version of Léon’s French-Italian accent, he says, “No women, no kids.”

Karen’s eyes jerk to him—she very nearly trips on the curb—and Frank looks shocked too, like he’d forgotten for a second how shitty his life is, that other people clearly didn’t share the same philosophy on who’s appropriate to gun down.

She faces forward and keeps walking instead of saying anything.

“You alright?” he asks, belated, when they’re halfway down the next block. “You just about spilled my new plant everywhere.”

Karen chuckles. “I’m okay.”

Frank just sighs, and sets down the side table to reposition it in his hands. “I’m a fuckin’ idiot.”

Karen shakes her head as she stops to wait for him, and turns. “No, you’re not, Frank.”

“Pretty sure I am,” Frank says, eyebrows raised, as he picks the table up again.

“No, put that down,” Karen says, and he does. She sets the plant down carefully on top of it, and tugs Frank around to face her. “I’m not friends with idiots,” she says firmly.

Frank smiles, looks down at his boots. “Guess we’re not friends, then.”

Karen can’t resist throwing her arms around him, and he hugs her back, with both arms, tight, regardless of his words. “Take it back,” she whispers, and he does.

 

Karen decides she likes the plant best in the corner of Frank’s living room, between the window and the couch, but it’ll need a stand of some sort. Frank puts the side table down in the bedroom, but it’s too tall to really work as a side table when he doesn’t have a bedframe yet. He ends up putting it in the corner of the living room, with the plant on top.

His bedside lamp can continue to sit on the floor for now.

Frank and Karen return to the couch, and she describes the stories she’s working on, one about people locked up on Rikers Island because they can’t afford bail, and another on a salon in the East Village that’s been a front for a major meth operation. For the former, Frank actually has a good idea for a source, and spells out the name for Karen to plug into her phone.

She tells him about Foggy and Marci’s Christmas party, and how much more confidence Foggy has now, with the steady girlfriend and the cushy job, but it becomes clear from his comments that Frank has no idea that Matt’s dead.

When she tells him about Midland Circle, and the funeral, Frank’s face changes to a look of astonishment. He apologizes profusely, for her loss, but also for what he’d said—that Murdock must not like when Nelson can truly hold his own, that it must fuck up the dynamic that had worked for so long in Murdock’s favor.

If he was still alive, though, she’s sure that would have been a reasonable assumption.

Karen’s about as over it as a person can be about the sudden death of a friend, she thinks. She’s known a lot of loss, and it helps that she rarely sees Foggy, and is so busy with work that isn’t in a law office.

She doesn’t really want to talk about it, though, and asks Frank questions instead.

So far, the fake ID has been solid. He’s rented this apartment under Pete Castiglione, and pays rent and bills with paper checks in that name, and they clear every time. He’s splurged on some nice kitchenware, but that’s the only thing so far, really.

He’s trying to figure out how the fuck to get a job, though, not because he needs money, but because he needs something to _do_. It’s not like Pete came with his own resumé, or references.

He’s been going to group. It isn’t too bad, because he can spend most of the time just listening. Catharsis is a real thing. Curtis doesn’t make him talk every time, and the other vets don’t put him on the spot often enough to turn him off.

Before they know it, two hours have gone by, and it’s pitch dark outside.

“You hungry?” Frank asks, and Karen nods.

He gets up, and starts taking stuff out of the fridge.

 

She sits on a barstool across from Frank, and watches him make dinner. There’s a tray of panko and flour next to the stove, and an unopened package of pork chops. He won’t let Karen help beyond setting the table, which is already done.

He looks so handsome in the kitchen, it’s disgusting. She can see him as a dad so clearly this way—he’s totally at ease, a towel over his shoulder, slicing carrots into disks with a chef’s knife.

If she waits until tomorrow, she’ll regret it.

“Tell me something,” Karen says, munching on a piece she’d swiped from Frank’s cutting board.

Frank doesn’t look up, starts on another carrot instead. “Yeah.”

“Right now, we’re kind of spending actual quality time together for the first time ever.”

Frank shrugs. “I guess. If you don’t count the trial, or aiding a fugitive, or Lewis.”

“I don’t.”

“Fair enough,” he says, and nods.

She rests her elbow on the counter, rests her cheek against her fist. “So my question is, are you really gonna make me sleep in your bed tonight, alone?”

The knife stays at an angle, tip touching the cutting board, when Frank looks up. He slowly lowers it to clatter on the countertop. “Not—not if you don’t want me to,” he says carefully.

“I don’t.”

Frank wipes his hands on the towel as he walks around to her side of the counter, until he’s a couple of feet away, like he’s afraid to come closer.

“You sure about that?” he asks, but it comes out more like a croak.

“Yeah, Frank,” she says, and swivels in the stool to face him.

His eyes close as he sighs, like he’s deflating. “Can I kiss you?” he asks quietly, not looking at her.

“Yes,” she says, and he opens his eyes in time to see her nod.

He steps forward to close the distance, slides his fingers into her hair, and Karen smiles, brings both her hands up to pull him in.

Frank’s lips are careful, tentative against hers, so she doesn’t push him, just opens her mouth and presses in slow before breaking the kiss. He holds his forehead against hers afterward, and breathes out.

“You wanna help me sauté the carrots?”

Karen smiles and nods against him, just as Frank draws her in for another kiss.

They work side-by-side at the stove while Frank coats the chops in flour, panko, and spices, and fries them golden-brown.

They eat at the counter. She hardly tastes the food, though. She’s so distracted by the way he’s smiling at her, the way he drinks his beer, the way the muscles in his arms move as he cuts his meat.

They leave the dishes for later—Frank just fills the chop pan with water to soak.

“I know that look, Karen,” Frank says, as he turns away from the sink and watches her drain the last of her beer in the middle of his kitchen. “You keep makin’ those goddamn eyes at me, I’m gonna have to take you to bed.”

And then he’s stalking forward and kissing her again, and her arms are putting the bottle down and wrapping around his neck. Frank’s hands come down to grip her ass, to pick her up the way Karen always knew he could.

Frank’s steps don’t falter, he hitches her legs around his hips and carries her into the bedroom, while she mouths at the skin behind his ear.

He deposits her onto the mattress in the light of his bedside lamp, and pulls back to kneel between Karen’s legs, looking down at her. Smooths his hands up her thighs, smiles when she arches her hips into his touch.

She pulls him back in soon enough, moans into Frank’s mouth when he grinds against her. Frank tugs his shirt over his head, and Karen runs her hands over firm, scarred muscle, before descending to his belt buckle.

“There’s condoms in my bag,” she says between kisses, as she works his pants open.

“Hang on,” Frank says, and presses one more sloppy kiss to her mouth before he stands up, leans down to unzip his boots, to strip off his pants.

He retrieves Karen’s overnight bag, too, and places it within arm’s reach for her.

She’s still fully dressed, her fingers tugging at the top button of her blouse as she waits for Frank to return to her. When he kneels between her legs again, he undoes the bottom button, and the one after that, before leaning in to push the fabric aside and lick at her stomach.

Frank slides rough hands up her ribcage before he pops the next one, exposing her bra, and the one above it, granting him access to what little cleavage she has. Karen pushes him backward as she sits up to shrug out of her top, and tosses it away from them, across the floor. He pulls her pants down after that, and Karen lifts her hips to help, manages to not kick Frank in the face as he tugs them free of her ankles.

Her hands are shaking—and maybe her hands aren’t sure that this is real, like they think this could all disappear if she grasps it too hard. Frank’s whole body feels hot to the touch, but she clings to him anyway, and as he grinds against her through their underwear and drags his teeth across her throat, her breath shakes, too.

“Fuck, Frank,” she says, and her voice breaks. He leans back up to check on her, and Karen nods that she’s okay, pulls one of Frank’s pillows over to tuck beneath her head.

“Is there anything I can do?” he asks, smoothing some of Karen’s hair out of her face.

“You’re doing it,” she replies.

Frank smiles, leans in to kiss her again, trails his mouth down her jaw. “This all you want?” he asks, soft, in her ear. “If you’re not ready, we—”

“I want you so bad,” she says, and digs her fingers into his hair. “Please, Frank.”

“Okay,” he says, and nods, his thick fingers reaching under her back to get at the clasp of her bra. They draw the straps down her arms, and Karen watches Frank admire her chest, before he cups one breast in his hand and sucks her nipple into his mouth.

He groans and hums around it, his hard cock pressing against her even more insistently, and she rocks into him when he grazes the edge of her clit with it. Karen moans, and her wetness is so apparent, now, she can feel her underwear molding to her folds where Frank’s cock has been rubbing on her.

“Please, Frank,” she repeats. “Please, fuck me.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he mumbles seriously, and pulls Karen’s bag closer. She digs through it for the condoms as Frank pulls her underwear down and then his own.

She gets the box open, and looks up, at where Frank’s kneeling, naked in front of her, powerful and gentle and _wanting her_. He’s almost too much to look at, his body strong and his wounds healed over, pink and puckered in places, but not as angry red as they must have been before.

There’s a bead of clear-white at the tip of his cock. He’s waiting for her.

He touches her, smears his fingers through the slick folds of her pussy, and Karen hums at the contact before wrapping her hand around him. After everything Frank’s body has been through, this part of him is still smooth like buttery velvet, stretched over a thick, curved erection.

Frank slides his middle finger inside her slow, and that feels good. He adds a second after a few strokes, curling them, and smiles down at her as Karen strokes him back, her eyes half-open.

She looks to the box of condoms again after that. Karen’s hands have settled down enough that she can rip one open, and she hands it to Frank, watches him roll it down to the base. She scoots up the bed several inches, and Frank stretches out from his kneeling position, to press his hips between hers.

He’s up on one elbow, and Karen brings a hand down to help guide him, and with a hot, slow stretch, Frank’s pushing inside her, and fuck, he’s thick. It takes a few thrusts for the ache to dissolve, and then he’s holding himself above her. His eyes are open, his face set like he’s concentrating, until he meets her gaze, and licks his lips.

“God, Karen,” he grits out.

She gets wetter the deeper he goes, and Frank’s thrusts speed up, his forehead pressing into her temple. Karen kisses his face, her hands running across the skin on his back and dragging over his scalp.

This is exactly what she wanted.

She wraps her legs around Frank’s waist, takes him right to the hilt. He groans into her neck then, kisses beneath her jaw as their skins slap together, and it’s perfect. 

“Hoooh-ly shit, Frank,” she says on an exhale, and hears him chuckle into her skin.

“Yeah, you like that?”

She tugs on his hair when she nods yes. When he kisses her again, he slides his tongue into her mouth.

Frank’s a solid weight on top of her, regardless of the way he holds himself up, and it feels good, grounding, turning any movement she makes into a grind, but it’s not nearly enough.

Karen brings a hand down to her clit, and Frank pulls back on his hands to make some room, watches her touch herself, watches the way his cock’s pistoning into her.

“Fuck, that’s so hot, Karen,” he says with a smirk.

She grins back, licking her lips. She’s sweating, breathing hard. “Wanna come just like this, with you inside me.”

“You will, babe—hang on,” Frank says, and she doesn’t even have time to register the casual slip of a pet name before he pulls out of her to get back onto his knees. His hands grip Karen’s hips to lift her, and he enters her again, pushes deep.

Frank pulls out partway, and slams back into her, hard.

“Oh,” she says, moving one leg up to rest over his shoulder, and closes her eyes. “Oh my god, you’re good.”

She opens them again when Frank’s thumb has begun circling her clit. His other hand’s gripping her thigh to his chest to hold her up, and the pressure feels incredible, even if there’ll probably be bruises tomorrow. She bears down, clenches her muscles around Frank’s cock as her fingers join his at her clit. He lets her take over, holding her hips in both hands again, and focuses on fucking her well, watching her face.

The pleasure’s building inside her, and she almost doesn’t want to crash yet, wants to prolong this, because she doesn’t know when she’ll have him again, if she will, they’ve never had the luxury of time—but Frank’s just hammering away at her, their skins loud and sloppy in her ears.

“Oh, god, Frank,” she practically whimpers, and she can feel the rhythm of his cock like hot ripples coming out from her center, like every time he slams home, Karen’s one step closer to falling apart, the sensation just as prominent as her fingers tapping at her clit. She doesn’t remember the last time she was fucked like this.

Frank’s face is all red with effort, a faint sheen of sweat on his skin. He opens his mouth to say, “I wanna see you come, Karen,” and she nods, still working herself over.

Hearing his voice doesn’t hurt at all.

“I’m almost—” she says, panting up at him, and after another thrust, Karen cries out, tripping into a climax that steals the breath from her lungs, and Frank slows his pace to guide her through it, or maybe that’s everything, the whole world in slow-motion, like a car crash that she wants to last forever—

It’s so much.

She feels Frank pull out, and her pussy’s still twitching through the end of her orgasm when he lowers her down to the mattress. He takes off the condom and tosses it somewhere, fists himself.

Karen smiles up at him, still breathing hard. “Kiss me,” she says, raises her hands to pull him down to her.

Frank leans in, kisses her hard, and groans. “Fuck, can I, can I come on your chest,” he says, eyes clenched shut.

“Yes,” she says, nodding, and he kisses her again. Karen looks down to watch Frank jerk himself, and it only takes a few more strokes before a thick stream of white shoots from him, lands hot on her skin like wax, followed by another.

A choking sound escapes from Frank’s mouth like a sob as the last spurts of cum seep over his knuckles, and he moves from between Karen’s legs to collapse beside her.

Her head’s clear enough to pay attention to a drip rolling down her ribcage, and Karen catches it with her fingertip, wipes it between her breasts.

Frank’s watching her. “You’re so goddamn beautiful,” he says with a smile and a heavy sigh, his eyes hazy. “Jesus Christ.”

He rolls onto his side and looks down at her, appraises his handiwork, like he could judge the splatter out of ten on form and precision. He leans in, licks his own cum off the curve of her closest breast, and sucks her into his mouth again.

His face is so tender while he does it that her breath catches in her throat.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” he says, and Karen nods, watches him get up and head for the bathroom.

 

It’s still early, afterward, barely half-past eight. They take a shower, and go back to bed.

Frank finger-combs Karen’s damp hair, and pulls most of it into a braid that neither of them bother to tie off, and she smiles every time she looks at it. Kisses his bearded cheeks because she can.

He retrieves his laptop from the front room, and pulls up Netflix because that feels like the thing to do, but they can’t decide on anything, so it gets cast aside.

Karen traces her fingers over each of his new scars instead. Frank’s stitches have all come out, his bruises are all gone, and Karen rolls Frank onto his back to kiss his chest and arms, straddles his waist to get the best view.

He looks almost bashful, but grips her thighs anyway.

“Are you happy?” she asks.

One side of his mouth quirks up, and Frank brings a hand up, brushes the backs of his fingers over her cheek. “I am today, with you. Don’t know how to answer you about the rest of it.”

Karen nods, and leans into his hand when he cups her face. “What d’you wanna do tomorrow?”

He smiles fully, lets his hand drop to her collarbone, and skim down between her breasts. “You mean, besides not letting you leave?”

Karen chuckles. “As much as I’m sure I would enjoy that, some of us have these things called jobs.”

Frank scrunches his nose up, and shakes his head like the idea’s foreign to him. Leaning in, Karen kisses the look off his face, and climbs off of Frank to lay beside him.

She shoves the pillow into the shape she wants it, and curls on her side, watches his eyes close.

There’s a dresser against the opposite wall, with a framed photo on top of it.

Karen rolls over, and switches off the lamp.

 

“You came prepared,” Frank remarks the next morning, while Karen’s brushing her teeth. She pauses, and can hear him shaking the box of condoms she’d left on the floor in the bedroom. “Was this your plan, seduce me?”

Karen rolls her eyes in the mirror, and spits. “Actually, I’ve got a boyfriend fifteen minutes from here that you don’t know about. Thought I’d get a chance to see him before I left.”

“Ouch,” he says, poking into the doorway of the bathroom.

She smiles, rinses her mouth, and spits again, tapping her toothbrush against the edge of the sink. “Listen, you invited me, a lovely single woman, out of the city for a seemingly social weekend in which you were going to cook.”

He chuckles. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

“You gonna do it again?” she asks, putting her toothbrush away and pulling out a small hairbrush.

“I was gonna ask you about that,” Frank says, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’ll be in Manhattan on Thursday, for group. I could come by, after.”

“I mean, if you don’t have anything better to do,” Karen says, hiding a smile as she fixes her hair in the mirror.

“You know that I don’t,” he says, stepping away from the doorjamb to lean in and kiss her neck, and Frank’s hands turn her face so that he can get at her mouth.

She lets him have a warm, languid kiss, and then pulls back, and looks in her toiletry bag for a hair tie. “If you give me ten more minutes in here, uninterrupted, you won’t have to wait until Thursday.”

That straightens him right up. “Yes, ma’am.”

 

Frank walks her to the bus stop that night, after an early dinner out. It’s dark out and sprinkling rain, and they stand under the awnings of the shops while they wait.

“You want to be with me, right?” she asks softly, her bag at her feet, and maybe it’s too soon, but it’s way too important to not address. “I know there are parts of you that you can’t give me, but—”

Frank turns to look at her, with a slight frown. “Did you think this was just sex?”

“Of course not,” she says, shaking her head.

“Yes, I want to be with you,” he says, and sighs, looking down at his boots. “I don’t know how it’ll work, but I want it to.”

Karen smiles. “Me too.”

There’s a bus coming up the street. She bends to pick up her bag, and pulls her MetroCard from her pocket.

“You’re sure you don’t want me to drive you?” Frank asks.

She nods. “The train’s fine. I’ll text you when I get back.”

He puts a hand on her cheek, kisses her see-you-later, but from him, it’s still the kind of kiss that leaves her aching, wanting more. She has to go, though—she has an interview scheduled for seven-thirty the next morning and a press conference to attend after that.

She can feel Frank on her lips for the hour and forty minutes it takes her to get home.

 

A text from Frank’s new number, saved in her phone under ‘Yonkers,’ comes through while the press conference is wrapping up the next morning. She puts away her notepad and recorder, and takes her phone off of silent.

**_Thinking about you._ **

Karen’s ravenous, hasn’t eaten yet, and she responds to him while she stands in line outside the building, at a bagel cart.

**_Good. Don’t stop._ **

**_No risk of that happening._ **

It’s the best bagel she’s had in a while.

By the time Karen gets back to the newsroom, her cheeks hurt from smiling.

Ellison’s immediately intrigued, when he comes into her office. “Does this have something to do with that mysterious weekend off you took, after taking no extra time off at all during the holidays?”

Karen clears her throat and doesn’t answer, just lets his imagination run wild.

She types up her notes and the best quotes from her first interview that morning, pounds coffee, and sends a couple of drafts off to the copy desk.

Ellison never gives up, though. By one o’clock, Karen sighs and says, “I went on a date.”

 

Karen and Frank are washing the dishes from dinner on Thursday night when Alicia and Nick start up again.

It’s quieter from Karen’s kitchen than it is when she’s in her bedroom, but Karen doesn’t say anything, just shuts off the water and waits for Frank to notice. In her periphery, his head cocks to the side, like he might be able to hear better that way.

Next door, there’s a muffled moan, and what sounds like, “Oh, fuck! Right there!” 

“For Christ’s sake,” Frank says, and cracks up. “Are they serious?”

She nods. “It’s like clockwork, past couple months. We share a bedroom wall.”

Frank takes the pan that Karen hands him and shakes his head. “You wanna give ‘em a run for their money?”

Karen grins. “I was gonna ask you the same thing.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](http://glycerineclown.tumblr.com), as always. This fic is rebloggable [here](http://glycerineclown.tumblr.com/post/170019632883/title-the-luxury-of-time-pairing-frank), if you're so inclined!


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